The present disclosure relates generally to a shopping system comprising a guide robot and a workstation computer. More particularly, the present disclosure is related to a shopping guide system comprising a guide robot coupled to a workstation computer or multiple guide robots coupled to the workstation computer. Still more particularly, the present disclosure is related to a shopping system comprising multiple personal shopping guide robots coupled to multiple workstation computers, which are coupled to a wide area network.
Robots for industrial, retail, office, and personal use have been developed which are used to perform many useful activities. Some robots have been developed to guide an unguided person to a destination in an office. Such robots can perform intuitive interaction with one or more persons and may be configured to greet a person, provide answers to basic questions, and may even accompany a person to a destination. Such robots may employ visual perception, sound source localization, and/or speech recognition to interact with people.
Other guide robots are configured to provide information to a customer about goods and services available at a store and/or answer specific inquiries from the customer. At present, however, no records are kept by the guide robot of its interaction with the customer or of the customer's individual shopping preference. Therefore, there is no mechanism to provide customized service or shopping guidance to the customer on their next visit to the store.
Accordingly, despite recent advances, there is a need for an improved shopping system comprising a personal guide robot and workstation computer working together to create and maintain a database of information associated with an individual customer's shopping preferences and tendencies. The improved shopping system can then use the information in the database to recognize an individual customer and better assist the customer in their shopping experience.